Pete Scott heads up an altruistic builders collective which gives practical support to families in Poole and Bournemouth who have children with life-limiting conditions

Altruistic Improvements & Modifications (AIM) is a new voluntary group I recently set up to help families in Poole and Bournemouth who have children with life-limiting illness or conditions. This voluntary collective of skilled builders carry out any alterations or building work required to enable families to better care for their children at home.

In normal circumstances the family needing building work done would pay for everything to complete the alterations. They would also have the added headache of having to source all the skilled tradespeople needed for each task – such as electricians, plumbers, plasterers and so on - and then co-ordinate everyone coming in at the right time for the project to be completed swiftly.

At AIM we can draw on a group of local tradespeople who give up their spare time to work completely free of charge, the families only need pay for the materials. And because we can co-ordinate all the required trade disciplines and source the materials we can reduce the time a project takes. This takes a huge worry off the shoulders of the family and is a significant cost saving too, which is a major concern for many.

Though families caring for a terminally ill child may have access to government/charitable grants to help finance the work, actually receiving these funds can be a rather protracted affair. We saw this situation ourselves with one family we are currently helping. They had applied for a government grant when their daughter Sadie was two years old. It has taken such a long time to actually acquire the financial aid that the initial work has only recently been completed and Sadie is now seven years old!

You may have watched the inspirational BBC series DIY SOS, headed up by Nick Knowles and a team of skilled builders, and seen the incredible difference that modifying a home can make. For families who have to overcome adversity on a daily basis, adaptations to their home to make life easier can be truly transformative.

I had the idea to form an altruistic building initiative around two years ago. Initially it was logistically daunting, but eventually all the pieces of the AIM collective came together and now we have more than 30 tradespeople on board. To get such positive support from such a large number of skilled and extremely experienced tradespeople was very inspiring. And it also reinforced my belief in the altruistic path we are on.

Currently AIM are working with various local children`s charities including Julia`s House (juliashouse.org), Amelia`s Rainbow (ameliasrainbow.org) and The Isabel Baker Foundation (theisabelbakerfoundation.co.uk). If you would like to join our collective and help grow our initiative to support and give practical help to some very special Dorset families we would love to hear from you.